Publish proposals for equal tax treatment of compensation payments
Post Office Horizon Inquiry · First Interim Report: Compensation · Issued 17 July 2023 · Addressed to: Department for Business and Trade
Government responseDepartment for Business and Trade: Accepted (Oct 2023)
DeliveryNo statement from Department for Business and Trade found
Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry
●Inquiry recommendation
DBT shall publish in as much detail as it reasonably can and as soon as it reasonably can, its proposals for ensuring that applicants to all schemes are treated equally and fairly so far as their liability to or exemption from income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax is concerned as the same relates to compensation payments under each scheme.
Post Office Horizon Inquiry, First Interim Report: Compensation · 17 Jul 2023 Source PDF →
Published evidence summary
AI-generated evidence summary
The Inquiry asked the government to publish proposals ensuring equal tax treatment across compensation schemes. In October 2023, the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) stated that payments under the Group Litigation Order (GLO) scheme and for overturned convictions were exempt from income tax, National Insurance contributions, and capital gains tax, while tax-exempt top-up payments were arranged for the Horizon Shortfall Scheme (HSS), with all three schemes exempt from inheritance tax (Department for Business and Trade response, Oct 2023).
Sources
AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 1 Oct 2026.
Government response
●Department for Business and Trade · Accepted · 26 Oct 2023
Payments under the GLO scheme and the compensation for overturned convictions (OC) are exempt from IT, National Insurance contributions (NICs) and CGT. On 19 June, the government announced arrangements for ensuring fair treatment in respect of IT, NICs and CGT for Horizon Shortfall Scheme (HSS) claimants. Initial offers under HSS did not account for the tax on compensation when paid as a lump sum, which means that postmasters were not necessarily restored to the position they would otherwise have been in. Top-up payments are the quickest and most efficient way to address this issue and will be exempt from tax. Details are set out in Annex A. Payments from all 3 schemes are exempt from IHT.
Extract from: DBT response to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry's first interim report: compensation
Delivery
No statement on delivery from Department for Business and Trade has been found in the sources searched. This is separate from the response above.
How this page is built
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